Case Study: How Princess Alice Hospice are using BrandStencil to create on-brand artwork

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August 3, 2015

Princess Alice Hospice is a charity in Surrey dedicated to providing free, high-quality compassionate care and support for patients, their families and carers. We created an online toolkit for staff and supporters to create and customise on brand promotional material which can be instantly printed.

Challenges

Princess Alice Hospice needed a system for their staff to create marketing material from templates where pre-defined fonts, colours and elements could be fixed but content could be personalised.

“Before we had Brand Stencil we were using Word documents to create posters and flyers, which the communications team spent a lot fixing up as they allowed people to enter incorrect fonts, colours or imagery/logos.”

Helena Agustsson, Web and Digital Officer

They wanted to maintain their strong brand identity in their print material, but this meant the small communications team were spending a lot of time approving artwork. It was also taking staff too long to create the material as they were having to adjust fiddly templates and work on revisions.

It was really important that the system was really simple to use so that multiple staff could pick this up without the need for training and would be motivated to create material through the platform.

Solution

We helped Princess Alice Hospice select which artwork to turn into their first set of templates - common marketing and fundraising materials the team was frequently creating using MS Word documents. This included; event booking forms, A4, A5, and A6 posters, fundraising certificates, leaflets and flyers.

We standardised all the assets including; margins, padding, font sizing and logo variations. This created a consistent, cohesive set of templates, reinforcing the brand and identity.

Using our online brand template tool, BrandStencil we defined the fixed and flexible elements of each template. We can create really smart templates which reduces the complexity for the creator but means they can make completely on brand templates super quickly.

Colour

Princess Alice’s brand guidelines allow for their logo and accent colour to vary according to one of their six secondary colours in their palette. We provided them with a colour picker on each template to give creators the flexibility to choose which of these approved colours they wanted to use on their artwork. Simply selecting a colour updated all the colour elements of the template instantly.

A poster in different colour variations

Images

Images, graphics and icons on templates can be fixed or chosen from a bank of pre-approved, high quality images, selected with one click.

Fonts

Princess Alice Hospice’s brand uses a supporting font, a handwritten style script within main titles and quotes to emphasise the human nature of the work they do. Although a lovely design touch it was difficult for creators to execute well and look professional. We were able to implement a solution where creators simply use markup to choose words or phrases in a sentence to use the font. All padding and height adjustments are automatically defined in the template.

An events poster featuring the handwritten font and an image

Typography

As they weren’t sure how some of the templates would be used we provided flexibility by giving the ability to scale the text in headings and boxed out areas using predefined settings. This retained ease of use for the creators as they simply select small, medium or large font and the content is automatically resized.

Fixed and Flexible Content

To maximise flexibility they can choose to include a strapline ‘Thank you for your support’ on most templates. This means they can use the template for communication with fundraisers (where they always include a thank you) and for internal staff comms.

A fundraising certificate with the strap-line ‘Thank you for your support’

Users and teams

BrandStencil allows Princess Alice to create users with different permissions which has helped them manage workflow as admins can review managed users artwork before they can print it. They can also make templates available to specific teams, ensuring only users with the right permissions can use each template.

Reporting

The built-in reports allow Princess Alice to see how many times a template has been used and which users are creating the most material.

Help and Tiered Support

Users can report any issues to admins within the company and these can be escalated to us if necessary.

Asset Library

BrandStencil also has a built-in a resource library to store all of their brand assets including brand guidelines, images, logos and other media.

Results

Since launch over 80 materials have been created by 18 people using 13 templates.

“Brand Stencil has made it easier for colleagues to create on-brand leaflets and posters as it is a simple process of cut and paste and selecting from a gallery of approved images. The new templates have also made the approval process much easier for the communications team. Now that we know all the fonts, colours, images and logos are on-brand before the posters come to us, all that remains is to approve the copy – which can be done with the click of a button.”

Helena Agustsson, Web and Digital Officer

“Having managed brands and digital assets across all sectors for over 10 years, this is the best product I’ve seen, hands down.

BrandStencil allows users to easily create their own materials while giving organisations the reassurance of great brand control.

It’s simple for everyone to use – no IT or design skills required – and brings an end to the many frustrating and wasted hours spent editing and approving branded documents.”